It seems a no- brainer, but we’ll say it anyway: As with sex, you should really know with whom you’re doing drugs.
In the case of Ewan McGregor’s character in the dark, diverting trifle “Deception,” both rules apply.
Buttoned-down tax accountant Jonathan McQuarry sits after hours in an office, poring over the books of one of his many corporate clients. Looking around, he observes a pair of office cleaners slip into a bathroom. Even they, it seems, have a friskier life than he.
Into his routine strolls Wyatt Bose, a dapper and charming senior partner at the firm. The two banter. Then Wyatt offers Jonathan a joint. Mary Jane introduces the new best friends, and the bean counter bares his soul.
Half-baked, “Deception” (directed by Marcel Langenegger from a screenplay by Mark Bomback) winds toward a busy conclusion that’ll have you pondering the state of airport security more than you should.
But long before we fret over passport control and plot points, we’ll travel the world of anonymous sex groups that cater to impossibly foxy corporate high-fliers.
Hugh Jackman plays Wyatt. A master of his universe, the suspiciously smooth operator takes the numbers-crunching Cinderfella (a guy who can’t get his super to fix a leak, let alone get him to remember his name) under his finely tailored wing.
The movie’s title insists we stay ahead of the ledger-smart, EQ-stunted Jonathan. Quick scenes provide clues we easily note that he misses at his own peril.
Given the life he’s plunged into, he can be forgiven this cluelessness.
Wyatt goes away on business. Cellphones get swapped, and Jonathan is initiated into a powerfully different world in which callers ring Wyatt’s mobile and ask, “Are you free tonight?”
The callers are drop-dead gorgeous, boldly successful women who, says one, want “intimacy without the intricacy.”
“Deception” recalls the fantasies of Showtime’s soft-core series “Red Shoe Diaries.” It’s often tastefully laughable.
But then, Jonathan is a study in gender reversals when it comes to sex. His first encounter has sex with him, then falls asleep while he lies awake and confused. His next caller smokes a post-coital cig and eyes him.
As the older woman who schools Jonathan in what he’s gotten himself into, fabulous Charlotte Rampling looks feline and pleased, like a cat of a certain age who’s devoured a canary or two in her time.
In a meeting that defies the odds (and what are the odds of that?), a woman Jonathan spied on a subway platform turns up as one of his encounters.
Michelle Williams is “S.” She and Jonathan break just enough rules that the lovesick pup believes they’ve got a future. Her disappearance and possible demise turns “Deception” from a high-minded Penthouse letter into an SVU investigation (complete with whip smart detective Lisa Gay Hamilton) into something altogether different when Wyatt finally returns from his travels.
Jackman proves the best reason to stick with a film whose title becomes an excuse to veer beyond believable psychological profile.
What’s Wyatt’s game? We can’t help asking, because — unlike Jonathan — we’ve known from the start that he’s had one.
Film critic Lisa Kennedy: 303-954-1567 or lkennedy@denverpost.com
“Deception”
R for sexual content, language, brief violence and some drug use. 1 hour, 48 minutes. Directed by Marcel Langenegger; written by Mark Bomback; photography by Dante Spinotti; starring Hugh Jackman, Ewan McGregor, Michelle Williams, Lisa Gay Hamilton, Maggie Q, Natasha Henstridge, Lynn Cohen, Danny Burstein, Malcolm Goodwin and Charlotte Rampling. Opens today at area theaters.
